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Passage to India Part 8 - My Father's Flight to India in 1934

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Published: 11Dec2009
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My father continued his story

On this Tuesday afternoon our audience became rather excited and started to gaze at a group of newcomers approaching some miles away over the plain. All the people in these parts carried small telescopes in little leather cases slung over their shoulders.

These were trained on the newcomers, and getting more and more excited and with many signs and gesticulations we were given to understand that it was a bad-man bandit who was arriving. Our audience immediately started to melt away, and very soon we two were left alone to receive our visitors, except for the "milkman' and two small boys who stuck to us all the time.

When the party finally arrived we found it consisted of about eight armed men, six of them forming an escort for the chief and his special attendant who walked in the middle. This attendant was carrying a hooded hawk on his wrist, and another carried some dead game, showing that they were returning from some hunting expedition.

The escort proceeded to entirely surround us while the chief walked up to us and salaamed, muttering the usual sort of greeting which we returned rather nervously, all the time wondering what was going to happen next. He then made signs to us to be seated and himself sat down facing us remaining gazing at us without speaking for what seemed like hours to me; till Lady Blanche felt something had to be done to relieve the nervous tension of the situation.

The only topic of conversation she could think of was his hawk and this she started admiring by signs and smiles which appeared to please him very much. She then had a brainwave and pointed to the drawing of a hawk on our machine (which bird it is named after) and his hawk, both identically the same. This delighted him and she invited him to come and inspect the engine of the machine, the cockpits and the luggage locker, in fact everything she could think of that might interest him. He seemed to take it all in and to become more and more friendly and pleased with us, and when we had shown him everything and returned to our seated circle the whole atmosphere had changed and there were smiles on the faces of all our visitors, guns were laid aside, and everything was as friendly as could be.

He then by signs asked us if we had anything to eat, and when we replied by showing him only a handful of dates he gave us a wild duck which evidently the hawk had quite recently killed. We tried to thank him, but at the same time explain to him that we had no means of cooking the bird. No utensils, and what was even more important, no sticks or wood of any kind to make a fire. However, he soon got over this difficulty by ordering our "milkman" to take it back to his village and cook it there for us - an order which was instantly obeyed, and that evening we ate it for supper and a more delicious duck I have never tasted.

After days of dates for every meal, it couldn't have been more welcome. The chief then called Lady Blanche over and wanted her to feel his pulse and his forehead, and again by signs intimated that he was not feeling at all well, also that he obviously expected me to produce medicine of some sort to put him right. (we thought he had somehow heard of our pills and iodine.) This put us in rather a difficulty as apart from a rather quick pulse and hot forehead he did not appear to have much the matter with him. Also we had heard that there was a law in Persia forbidding anyone but a Persian doctor to treat Persians. At least, if anyone did so and the Persian died, the outsider would be had up for murder! This we felt would even more apply to a bandit chief, and he became worse his followers would be out for our blood at once. However he was very insistent and had been so nice to us that we had to do what I could, and we handed over some of our pills and two cachets for his headache, all of which pleased him very much.

Soon after this he signed to his escort and with smiles and bows he walked off across the desert towards his mountain home.

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